Land in rural Africa performs a wide range of social, political, and economic roles. The relationship between statutory and customary law in determining land policy reforms reflects broader restructuration of political power and authority and configures dynamics state building, as well as the negotiation of national and local citizenship. This article addresses these issues in the case of Malawi where discussions over the role of customary authorities in land administration and management was a prominent feature of the land reform process undertaken since the mid-1990s following the transition to multiparty democracy. The article reconstructs the political and social context of land policy reform in Malawi in the last twenty years, and locates the Malawian case in the broader literature about land policy reform in Africa in order to highlight specificities, as well as common trends. I argue that customary rule in Malawi still plays a very relevant role in national and local decision-making processes, this being embodied by the current political impasse preventing the enactment of the land legislation. The analysis of the policy reports of the different land committees that followed one another for about twenty years since 1996 prove that the powers granted to customary authorities have considerably increased throughout time, and hence highlighting that the chiefs have been very successful as a lobbying group.

The development of land administration and management policies follows the movements and internal power struggles occurring during the regimes. At the centres of these powers there are struggles that delay, accelerate, influence, destabilize the policy-making process and the consolidation of land regimes. Currently, the design of land management and administration policies in Africa has been influenced by a reinterpretation of the relationship between the political regime, the land regime and the labour regime according to (neo) patrimonial logic where personification and centralization of power around the elites that integrate the power systems, stand as a bigger concern. Confronting these discourses, land administration and management policy options and models have been debated to ensure the rights of individuals and communities and promote rural development. Questions arise as to the level (central or local) these should be located and / or organized. This article intends to recall how the historical background and the current narratives relate to decentralization and the relationship between the law and customary norms in view of improving of land management in post-Independence Mozambique.

Considering “agrarian policies and rural transformation” in Africa requires careful attention to patterns of access to, use of, and authority over land. The legacy of colonial policies on land interacts with current processes of rising socio-economic inequality, increasing land scarcity and conflict over land. It is within these conditions that land reforms and programmes of agricultural development, usually in the name of a “green revolution”, as well as an accelerating trend towards land appropriation by both foreign and national agents must be understood. A brief consideration of colonial policies and practices on land and agriculture is followed by an assessment of current “green revolution” programmes, and of the widespread “land rush” across Africa. I conclude that these circumstances pose a growing threat to small- and medium-scale productive use of land and landed resources and facilitate displacement and dispossession of those users from land considered, whether legally or conventionally, as “customary” and “common”.

http://www.aiepeditore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/LITE-Africa-Livelihoods.jpg250873AIEPhttp://www.aiepeditore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/LOGO.jpgAIEP2017-02-05 21:38:282017-05-01 22:29:58The role of land policies, land laws and agricultural development in challenges to rural livelihoods in Africa

The Future of Agriculture in Zimbabwe? The expansion of contract farming and its impact on smallholder income and production

Gareth D. James

Private-led contract farming arrangements appear to be growing in significance in Zimbabwe. Since 2009, following the dollarisation of the economy and re-liberalisation of markets, opportunities for small-scale farmers to engage in contract farming have increased markedly, and the government has expressed its enthusiasm for extending the practice as widely as possible. However, there has been very little research on the expansion of private-led contract farming during this period to date. This article therefore presents an account of the emergence and expansion of contract farming, which has unfolded in two “waves” since 1980. It examines smallholder participation in contracts for tobacco and cotton and presents some preliminary findings on the extent to which contracts improve access to inputs, as well as comparing the means of crop income and yields for contract versus non-contract growers. The data appear to show significantly higher incomes and tobacco yields for contract growers, but no significant difference in yields when it comes to cotton production. While the article represents an important first step towards a better understanding of smallholder participation in contract farming in Zimbabwe, a number of unanswered questions remain. The final section of the paper highlights some of these questions and makes recommendations for future research.

This essay investigates the historical and political roots of the long-term marginalization of the rural areas within Zambia’s political economy and shows that the high expectations that accompanied Zambia’s double transition to multiparty politics and market liberalization in the early 1990s were largely frustrated by the stagnation of the economy during Chiluba’s presidency, and by the persistence of high poverty rates within a context of strong economic growth during the last decade. While soon after independence the government neglected the development of the rural areas, in the first half of the 1970s Kaunda and UNIP resolved to stimulate the growth of agricultural production, but their efforts paradoxically deepened the rural-urban development gap. Archival evidence shows that in the mid-1970s, when Zambia was hit by a serious economic crisis, the confusion concerning the goals and priorities of the rural development policy hampered policy-makers, and severely limited the effectiveness of the new rural development programs implemented by the government. Since the early 1980s the latter set in motion a process of gradual liberalization of the agricultural sector and removed producer and consumer subsidies. While large-scale commercial farmers benefited from the economic reforms by increaseing the production of highly profitable non-traditional export crops, small farmers found it difficult to adjust to the new economic dispensation, due to the increase in input prices, the lack of credit in the rural areas and the dodgy business practices of private traders. Within the context of the neoliberal development policy pursued by the Zambian government in the last two decades, state initiatives aimed at supporting smallholder agriculture have been highly fragmented and their benefits have disproportionally accrued to the better-off peasants. The essay argues that the unsolved rural question and the widespread economic and social marginalization in the urban centres opened the way to the electoral victory of Michael Sata and the PF in 2011. In spite of his demagogic electoral promises, Sata did not adopt a new and alternative economic policy, but continued to implement the neoliberal development strategy formulated by his predecessor Rupiah Banda. In addition, Sata undermined the autonomy of the judiciary, the media and civil society, and harnessed the opposition parties. During Sata’s presidency the economic marginalization of Zambia’s smallholder agriculture continued unabated. This, together with the persistence of widespread poverty, highlights the contradictions of a democratization process that not only seems still far from consolidation, but that the persistence of high poverty rates makes all the more unpredictable.